Canadian cardiac anaesthetist who died hours after climbing Mount Everest

Canadian cardiac anaesthetist Charles MacAdams was a skilled physician, highly respected for his exemplary care and outstanding compassion. He taught, researched, and provided clinical care at the Foothills Medical Centre, Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta, and University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. MacAdams also spent many months developing, teaching, and supervising critical care and cardiac anaesthesia at the Tribhuvan University Institute of Medicine in Kathmandu in Nepal.

Always reaching for the top

Charlie, as he was known to friends and family, was popular with his colleagues, students, and patients. He was passionate about his family, science, medicine, mentoring, research, adventure, his desire to make the world a better place, mountaineering, hiking, sailing, running, great conversations, boxer dogs, the Rockies, and Nepal. In May this year, Charlie MacAdams happily combined many of his passions during a trip that combined medical education and mountaineering in Nepal. He achieved a very special goal when he successfully completed the ascent and descent of the North Col of Mount Everest (7020 m). After the descent, he apparently went to sleep on the night of 10 May at Mount Everest’s base camp in Tibet, exhausted but exhilarated. He died in his tent during that night. He was 61 years old.